Saturday 1 October 2011

Saturday 1st October 2011

What a scorcher for the 1st October! It was the sort of day I like - a great group of Saturday lads and lots of interesting visitors - thank you all for coming.

We had a gang working the 1A Wall (Steve, Ken, Clive and Bob). we were joined for the first time today by Bob W who was  a 1000 a day man(bricks not cigarettes!) and that wall certainly went up - we have passed the 1/3 of the way marker (an expansion joint) and beyond. I hope Bob will want to come back as a regular - we will have 1A done in no time!

My greatest pleasure today was having Robin  back with us, on the dreaded brick cleaning. He has been off for while and has overcome a lot of medical stuff to be back with us. Robin, things seem back to normal for us now.


Is Vic There?
Yes he certainly was today! Vic Smith comes as regular as clockwork once a month on a round trip of 150+ miles. Here he does battle with the hedge line on 1B. This incidentally is looking in good shape now and request for quotations are in to dig and pour the footings. I will keep you posted!

Lastly I  got my act together and got the masts installed that will take our  camera system. It will be good to get images over the Internet so that followers can see the progress for themselves. This will take while - again I will keep you posted.

Marguerite has the Broadway Shed open for Bric a Brac business every Saturday. Please come along if you can.  Finally a thanks to John B who chatted to our many visitors today. This gave me the chance to get the camera masts done. Classic cars this week - a pristine MG TC and a VW Beetle 1200 -  bring yours along if you can better these!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll try and bring my 1978 Alfa Spider soon. Having just joined the Friends of Broadway (look forward to seeing my cheque cleared soon) I'm looking forward to our next occasional trip from south of Bristol to see how you're getting on. Keep up the good work, and the website is terrific at keeping people interested and getting them involved.

Anonymous said...

"Is Vic There?"

Now we can see the ground, is this the start of another dig for "Blues". It seem's that BR took the easy way and buried as much as possible, or is the other side the better?

Great progress yesterday! But I thought brick laying is supposed to be good therapy to relax you (Churchill, I believe said so),1000 bricks a day does not sound relaxing, beside if this is for real, we need to raise a lot more money! and SOON.

I hope to see the fantastic work on web cams soon!

Dave P.

Bill said...

Anonymous(1) Thanks for your interest - we are having an informal competition to see who comes along in the best classic car! On a serious note if you feel your friends of broadway Station application has gone astray please let me know via the contact email address on www.broadwaystation.co.uk
Bill

Jim Boyles said...

Hi Dave P,

As I understand the original station layout, the top of the wall that you can see, almost buried now behind the ballast (that is helping to keep it standing) is the original back wall, leading to a horse dock siding. As such, there would have been no platform in front of it, hence no blues to recover!

The opposite side, as you rightly suggest, should yield hundreds of blues - you only have to see how much the embankment has built up, over and above the level of the original Platform 2 Waiting Room, to realise there must be a lot of useful stuff under the vegetation.

Jim Boyles said...

Hi Bill,

I paid my usual Sunday visit to the Station today and, as I walked down the trackbed from the Springfield Lane end, I noticed definite caterpiller track marks - I thought for a moment you had reached agreement with the army for manoeuveres to be carried out - but then I saw that Dot the Drott had been moved and was now facing South! I take it that she is now up and running again?

Bill said...

Yes Jim,
Dot is back in action! It was wonderful to see (and hear!)
Bill

Anonymous said...

Is "Dot" going to go looking for "Blues" on the embankment? We have to keep up with Bricklayers who are capable of 1000 bricks a day! (in their prime!)

The one thing I want to know, from what I have seen in the pics, how do these Bricklayers stay so clean? When I am doing any work around the house, I am filthy inside of half an hour. They are clean four courses of bricks into the day!

Fantastic progress last week!


Dave P.